


she’s such a good girl (nobody knows the bind you’re in)

by o666666



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode: s07e07 Orison, F/M, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:28:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22762480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o666666/pseuds/o666666
Summary: Had they ever really agreed that words were not enough, or had she imagined it—this romantic concept that dually enabled her distance?Had she only projected depth onto their banal experiences?Did he think her cold?Samantha’s return forces Scully to reconsider her relationship with Mulder.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 17
Kudos: 102





	1. Chapter 1

He’s heard people say that first children get jealous and touchy when their baby sibling arrives. Only this is not like that, because Samantha is his little sister, not Scully’s. And they’re the same age. And Samantha was here first.

But Scully is… off. She’s been overly sensitive—keen to give the Mulders plenty of private time, even self-isolating—she is never hungry for lunch, she leaves the office for the weekend while he’s in the men’s room. And she’s quiet. God, in all the time he’s known her, he’s never heard her talk so quietly. Like she hates to take up the space.

“I was thinking we could walk along the reflecting pool tonight,” he says to her this afternoon, just to say something. “Show Sam the work turf. Maybe get dinner in Dupont after, look at some of the monuments in the dark. I don’t know. Touristy stuff.”

“That sounds wonderful, Mulder,” she says. She clears her throat. “That sounds like a wonderful night for the two of you.”

He can see her eyes get red, shiny, even from across the room.

“Excuse me,” she whispers. She’s making a break for the ladies room.

He stands up to intercept her. “Hey.” He catches her by the elbow.

“Mulder—”

He squeezes her hand. “You know I mean the three of us, right?”

Her nose gets ruddy so as to tell him: no. No, she didn’t know.

“I’ve missed you so much the last two weeks.” He can’t help himself. He thumbs her chin, tap tap, and it quivers. “Where have you been?”

She closes her eyes for a moment, composing herself. “Mulder, I don’t—“

“You’re not imposing. Maybe that’s not what you were going to say, but God, Scully, you’re… you’re not imposing.”

From the way she’s looking at him, from the way her chest is rising and falling heavily, he knows. She needs to hear this.

He tucks her hair behind her ear and lingers there to speak quietly, closer than before. “Don’t you think I’ve imagined you and Sam together so many times? You and me and Sam?”

She leans in, compelled by their proximity. Like she can’t resist it anymore. Like she’s been… depriving herself.

“I want you to have time together,” she says.

He takes her by the shoulders, gentle. When he speaks, it’s a rush. “Scully I want us all to have time together. I…” he shakes his head. “You’re my evidence, Scully. The only proof that I am not a total crackpot. I miss you like crazy and Sam doesn’t even believe you like me that much and I just need you guys to meet so I can be wonderfully, perfectly ganged up on in every argument for the rest of my life.”

Ah.

Yes.

She laughs.

“Is that okay?”

Yes, she nods.

It is far better than okay.


	2. Chapter 2

That night, Samantha twirls. Clomps ahead of them on their stroll around the reflecting pool and throws her arms out and _twirls_. Mulder and Scully bump elbows: _Look at her. Can you believe?_ (Their most mystical encounter to date.)

They buy street hot dogs and eat them by Lincoln’s big marble feet.

“There’s a secret face carved into the back,” Mulder says, chewing.

“Fox, I’m not _dumb_ ,” Samantha says. “I know _that_.”

He shrugs. If Scully was tall enough she’d lean her head on his shoulder; she leans it on his arm.

Bidding each other goodnight at their separate cars, Samantha kisses Scully on the cheek and hugs her tight, like a close friend. “It was so good to really meet you,” she says, though Scully’s been shy all evening.

“Fox.” She walks around the adjacent parking spot to Mulder’s passenger door. “Give Dana her goodnight kiss.”

-

Two nights later they have pizza at Mulder’s and watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to commemorate their youth.

“Fox destroyed this tape when we were little,” Samantha explains. “Unwound it and buried it right in the yard, he was so sick of this movie.”

“We Mulders are obsessive,” Mulder says. “She played this junk every day. If I had to hear about toot sweets one more time, I was gonna end it.”

Scully takes a bite of her second slice. “Bet you were just scared of the candy man.”

He faux-glares. “That is not nice.”

Samantha sighs, blissful, and pats Scully on the knee. “Oh, Dana. I love hanging out with you.”

-

The next day Mulder is exiled from his own home, and forced to take shelter at Scully’s. “We’re ‘sage-ing,’” he says, with air quotes. “Fucking reeks.”

It is the first time she thinks it—that Mulder’s lost, and unlost, sister reminds her of her own.

-

The day after that, Samantha calls her at work. “Dana? Fox gave me your number.”

“Hi Sam. … Oh, yes. Definitely.”

_This is it_ , Mulder thinks from across the room. _This is the moment at which they morph into twins and make a pact to disagree with me until I’m dead._

-

Scully is three glasses of Merlot beyond dignity. She is aware that she’s oversharing. But God, it feels good to have a girlfriend over on the couch, prying and teasing. She’s had to fan the tears out of her eyes _twice_ from laughing so hard. (The first time: Mulder refusing to wear a shirt to kindergarten. The second time: the two of them painting the neighbor’s dog.)

Now she is regaling her new friend with the tale of Antarctica.

“And he came to save me. I don’t know how he did it, but he stole a SnoCat and knew somebody would come looking for it and… saved me. With a _gunshot_ _wound_ to the _head_.”

She knows she has a faraway look in her eyes as she remembers his epic heroism. His still-warm self, curled around her, passed out from exhaustion in the snow.

_Thank you_ , she remembers thinking at him as she smushed her face into his hair. _Thank you thank you thank you._

Samantha shakes her head, awed. “And you’ve never kissed this man?” she asks. “Not once?”

Scully blushes, thinking of the New Year.

“Once,” she clarifies. “Don’t tell him I told you.”

“One!? Time!?” Samantha punches the couch cushions twice, to punctuate. She holds her head in her hands. “Jeez Louise. My brother has no game. Ugh!” She sweeps her arm in a grand gesture that spills the red wine on the beige sofa.

Samantha shoots up. “Shit! I’ll get the paper towels! Shit!”

“It’s fine,” Scully tells her, because it is.

Samantha is rooting frantically under the sink. “Do you have club soda?”

“Not under the sink,” Scully laughs, and Samantha drops her shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Dana.”

Her Mulderness, then, is overpowering. Scully feels a rush of tenderness for Samantha previously unfelt since Melissa’s murder.

“Don’t be,” she says, and pats her arm.

Samantha looks at her as if surprised—as if moved, rather. She tilts her head to one side, questioningly, and her ears get red.

God. So like Mulder.

Then she crushes Scully in a hug that pins her arms. “I’m so glad we’re sisters now.”

Tears come to Scully’s eyes, sudden and strange.

“Me too,” she tells Samantha, cupping her elbows. She sniffs. “I really am too.”


	3. Chapter 3

Samantha is tipsy when she comes home after midnight. Of course the two of them gossiped about him until late. (Or, he’s narcissistic.)

“ _Fooooooox_ ,” she fake throttles him. “Your girl is _waaaaaiting_.”

“She is not waiting.” (But she is his girl.)

“You chased her to Antarctica with a _gunshot_ _wound_ to the _head_ but you’ve only kissed her once? I mean, talk about mixed signals, brother, Jesus!”

Scully told Samantha that he’d kissed her?

Scully complained that it was only once?

“She told you that?”

“Yes.” Samantha sticks her nose in the air, prim. “We’re sisters now.”

He flops on the couch.

“You’re—?”

“You heard me,” she says. “Don’t fuck with Scully.”

“I do not ‘fuck with’ Scully.”

“Actually, exactly. Nevermind. Please _do_ fuck with Scully. All night long. For the rest of your life. Don’t forget to eat the…” she curls two fingers, obscenely. _The_ _pussy_.

“Come on,” he sighs, swatting the air. “Don’t talk about it… like that. Be respectful.”

“You be respectful!”

Samantha flops next to him and kicks her feet onto the coffee table, impassioned. “She’s over there calling you a hero, making you look all good in her stories, and all you can do is kiss her _once?_ ”

It’s unbelievable, really.

“She really told you that?”

“Yes, Fox. Yes, she did.”

“Did she…” he runs his hands through his hair, puffs his cheeks. “I mean, did she… say anything else about it?”

“Ha!” Samantha points at him. “Go ask her yourself. Lazy.”

-

The next morning, Samantha sits on his bed, legs crossed, as he shaves with the bathroom door open. Behind his reflection in the mirror, he can see her wiggling feet.

She says, “I just think you need to state your intentions, Fox. Really.”

“Oh, you do?” He turns to her. “I had no idea.”

She nods with big eyes, ignoring his sarcasm.

“Look,” he says. “Scully knows my intentions. And when Scully is ready, we’ll talk about it. But that is my business. And her business.”

Samantha pouts.

“I’m serious,” Mulder warns. He remembers all the times at which his imploring Scully to do something had only inspired her to dig her heels in. Or worse, to retreat. “Do not push.”


	4. Wasting

She pushes.

Samantha needs a new coat, sick of wearing Mulder’s—though she will buy a women’s version of the very same style, with a corduroy collar, and make Scully grin.

So they go shopping.

They walk through Georgetown munching apples, Samantha swinging her bag.

“If Mulder asked you on a date,” she chews, “would you say yes?”

Scully chuckles. “I—of course I would.”

Samantha’s eyebrows go up.

“I have before,” Scully explains, shrugging. “We go on dates.”

“You do?”

“I mean…” Scully thumbs through an on-sale rack on the sidewalk. “Yes. Of course we do. We… play baseball.” Once. “Or… go to a haunted house.” Once. “Or to the emergency room.”

She holds up a white blouse. “This one?”

Samantha points to a sheer-er black one. “That one. Dana, you must be kidding.”

Scully shrugs, leaving both blouses on the rack. Samantha follows.

“You two have never gone to… a restaurant? The movies?”

“We’ve done those things.”

“But not with the _mindset_ , Dana.”

“Look,” Scully says. “I’m sure Mulder knows… how I feel. If he ever wanted to ask me to some… romantic dinner, he knows what I’d say.”

“But _Dana_.” Samantha searches for the words. “Doesn’t all of this… waiting around just strike you as… I don’t know, a supreme waste of time?”

Scully stops where she stands, suddenly and deeply ashamed.

Had she not told herself the same thing during her cancer?

Had she not promised herself to stop wasting time when she survived?

And now here she was, years later, beside the one person whose Mulderly insights, by familial osmosis, seemed to surpass her own. Did Mulder agree? Did he think her a cowardly time-waster?

After reuniting with her brother so suddenly, didn’t Samantha know exactly the feeling of wasted time?

Why was she so stupid?

Samantha keeps walking, but quickly misses her companion. “Dana?”

She turns around. “Hey, Dana, what’s wrong?”

Scully’s hung her head low, and she shivers when Sam approaches. “I’m sorry,” she says, swiping her eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing.”

Sam’s eyes bloom, as Mulder’s do, when concerned.

“This is just…” Scully shrugs and swallows. “You’re right. It’s—this is juvenile! And it’s embarrassing!”

“ _Hey_.” Sam grabs Scully’s hand and squeezes. “Dana. Hey. Listen.”

Dana listens.

“I wasn’t… that wasn’t my point, that it’s juvenile. It’s not. It’s very, very serious.”

Scully blinks.

“Don’t listen to a word I say.” Sam is adamant. “Seriously, that’s the first rule of talking to me. Who am I? Really. I don’t know anything. I swear.”

Scully coughs a laugh and squeezes Sam’s hand back. “That’s not true,” she says, softly. “You know a lot.”


	5. Hedging

Late that night, in bed, Scully can’t get it out of her mind. All these years with Mulder—all that time spent together. The “dates” that really didn’t qualify as dates.

Had she been deluding herself that they were making progress? Had she been only hoping that he could see inside of her the steady bloom of all she felt—the enrichment of her psychological soil, purely by, and purely _for_ Mulder? Had they ever really agreed that words were not enough, or had she imagined it—this romantic concept that dually enabled her distance?

Had she only projected depth onto their banal experiences?

Did he think her cold?

She calls him on the phone.

“It’s me,” she says when he picks up. She imagines him stretched out on his sofa, an arm pillowed behind his head.

“Hi, you,” he says. She imagines him looking at the VCR clock and noting the hour. “You ok?”

“I’m good,” she tells him, not meaning it. But suddenly her courage leaves her, and she cannot think to say anything else.

“What’s up?” he asks her. “Did you call to tell me that _The_ _Graduate_ is airing on loop for the next 24 hours on TCM? Because if so, I already know.”

She smiles. “I missed you today.”

“I heard you had a good time. Samantha says you went to Victoria’s Secret, but I’m sure that’s a lie. Am I still your favorite Mulder?”

“Yes,” she says quietly, the seriousness of her earlier thoughts returning. “That will always be true.”

Sensing her anxiety—as he had the first moment she’d called—he switches gears. “You sure you’re okay, Scully?”

She swallows. _Are we wasting time?_ , she thinks. When she speaks, she sounds small.

“Are we wasting time?”

“Scully I—uh.” She imagines him sitting up, swinging his feet to the floor, puzzled. Switching the phone to his other hand in order to rub at the knot in his shoulder. “Wasting time?” he asks her. “What do you mean?”

She swallows. “Just… with us, Mulder. Between you and me. Are we… is there something we should be doing, and we’re not?”

“Did Samantha say something to you?” He’s so protective; her eyes swamp.

She sniffs. And lies. “No.”

“Well,” he starts, ever the diplomat. “First of all, you’re calling me up at one-thirty in the morning. So something tells me that isn’t true.”

“Do you think I’m cold?” she asks, and she hears him huff, surprised.

“Scully, _what?_ What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. And clearly I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Hey.” He interrupts her the same way Samantha had earlier. “Hey. Yes you do. Yes you do know what you’re doing.”

“But I… make promises to myself. And… to you, in a way. And I break them all the time.”

This time, he does not interrupt.

“And I worry that… all these things we share together, that I let them go to waste. That I… assign meaning to them without… pursuing the truth. Without any _regard_ for the truth. And what if I’m wrong?”

She imagines him shaking his head. And in Arlington, Mulder shakes his head indeed.

“Scully, you wanna know the truth?”

She does.

“Whatever Samantha told you today about the two of us wasting time—don’t listen to her. She met you three weeks ago. She wasn’t here for… she didn’t see you when you were sick. She didn’t see us at our worst, when I was so horrible to you last year. What does she know?”

“Mulder—“

“The truth is Scully, you don’t assign meaning to anything without the facts. And when it comes to me, you’ve got the facts. Okay? And whenever you want to hear them, I will tell them to you, clear as the summer day. But if you want to just… hedge, for a bit, then I’m here. Waiting. For as long as you want to hedge.”

She swallows. She loves him.

“Trust me that I have projected _so much_ ,” he says. “Onto your every word. For years. You are only doing me a great service to do the same. Because it is true that every time I pour your coffee or drag you into a ghost mansion, I’m really doing something else. Many somethings, else.”

“Yeah?” she asks him, compelled, though it embarrasses her immediately.

“Yeah, Scully.” A long pause. Him pinching the bridge of his nose, she thinks. “You know me.”

She listens to his breath over the phone, not speaking. She hears the squish of his cushions as he rearranges his legs. “You know me too,” she promises him, after what feels like a long time. “Better than anyone.”


	6. Chapter 6

Mulder is stomping around his apartment. He’s gonna be late to pick up Scully for the airport. And _this_ , this he remembers.

He has had it up to _here_ with Samantha. His little sister is a little shit.

She is _incessant_. It is _obnoxious_.

When he gets home from work: “Fox, there’s a picture of Dana on your desk with a banana in her nose. What’s up with that?”  
  
When he opens his eyes in the morning: “Fox! Your work starts at eight! Get up! Doesn’t Dana keep a blow dryer here somewhere?”  
  
Over dinner: “Tell me more about Dana’s identity as a Pisces.”  
  
On a run: “I think you should go over there and forget your wallet on purpose. That way you have to go back, _later_ , at _night_ , and it’s like, a casual excuse. Oh—wait. You aren’t twenty-two! Just fucking confess yourself, already!”  
  
He is losing his mind.  
  
Not least because, in addition to his sister’s constant nagging of him _personally_ , she has begun to nag Scully. And he knows Samantha. Sure, they have only just come together for the first time in twenty-seven years. But he knows about her habits. He knows she talks constantly. He knows she pokes. And pokes. And pokes. And, also, that she does so with the purest golden heart. The most irritating, but also the purest. He’s got her number. And Scully, he fears, does not.  
  
He worries that Scully takes Sam’s poking to heart, or considers it Sam’s judgement of her character.  
  
He wonders how much, already, she has moralized the action-taking for which Sam advocates—purely because she likes Sam so much. How many times has Dana Scully followed him somewhere reckless via love? (Or so he suspects.)  
  
He worries that Scully wants to impress Samantha enough to exhibit herself emotionally. He worries that Scully worries her new friend might find her repressed.  
  
Ever since their long, ambiguous, heart-stopping phone call, his partner has been twitchy. Weird, around him. Like she’s sneaking around the rules, only the arbiter is herself, and the plug is Samantha. He doesn’t want her to feel _peer pressure_. He wants her to move at her own pace, Samantha and rationality and his persistent half-erection be damned. He doesn’t want to yield to her anxieties, per say. But he does want her to relax. Because he really did mean it: he’ll wait.  
  
And on this day, he is pissed.  
  
Samantha was an _ass_ at dinner.  
  
“Who’s the one celebrity figure you’d like to spend a day with?” she’d asked, quizzing them.  
  
“Mickey Mantle.”  
  
“Eleanor Roosevelt.”  
  
Then: “What’s the greatest love story ever told?”  
  
“ _Pride and Prejudice_.”  
  
“ _Jaws: The Revenge_.”  
  
Then: “Oh, let’s all go around and say how many people we’ve slept with!”  
  
“ _No_.”  
  
She’d stretched her legs across the whole booth so he and Scully would sit together.  
  
If only Samantha had seen him squeeze Scully’s knee reassuringly, or how she’d linked their arms at the elbow, under the table, in return.  
  
And his sister calls _him_ clueless.  
  
Now she is following him from room to room as he throws things into his suitcase. Two clean shirts, check. Socks, check. PJ pants, check. Roiling, anxious stomach, check. “What’s this about, again?” Sam asks, sipping her coffee and leaning on his doorframe. “This is about last night, right? Who called? Why did Dana look so sick?”

Yes, it’s about last night; the United States Penitentiary, Marion; because she wants to keep all her fucking fingers. “None of your business.”  
  
“You guys booked a flight pretty fast.”  
  
“Yes, we did.”

“How long will you be gone? Is it dangerous?” 

“I don’t know. And yes, it is.”

“You don’t have to be so _cagey_ , Fox. I’m sorry for caring.”

He whirls to face her, patience spent. “You know what, Samantha, I think you care a little too much.” He jabs an index finger in her direction, and she frowns. “And if you make Scully uncomfortable one more time, I _swear to God_ —” 

She sips her coffee, and her blissful _Ah_ interrupts him. She blinks at him with long eyelashes. “Can I drive with you to the airport?” 

He sighs. 

“Come on, I’m already awake! I’m awake!” 

“No, Samantha.” And that’s final. 

She sits down on the couch, bizarrely quiet as he gathers the last of his things, slides his shoes on and throws his jacket over his arm. 

“Bye, Sam,” he tells her. He feels slightly sorry for snapping, but she’s resilient. 

“Be careful,” she says. He sees her at eight years old. “Will you tell Dana to be careful for me?” 

“Yeah,” he nods. “I’ll tell her in Illinois.” 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *so, Donnie Pfaster canonically escapes from prison at 6:06 AM, but fuck that cuz i forgot. for the purposes of this story, as written in the previous chapter, pfaster escaped the night before. thank you all for your patience! and thank you to @foxmulders for sequencing assistance.

So Donnie Pfaster had escaped from prison. 

In Illinois of course, but last night it had made her sick, made her remember his face as any man’s, or every man’s—the way it morphed, the way no one was safe.

The Marion Police Department had called her as she and Mulder and Sam crossed the diner parking lot, back to their respective vehicles. “May I speak to Agent Dana Scully?,” _This is she_ , and then: “Hi Agent. Our inmate, Donald Pfaster, escaped prison grounds this evening during nondenominational mass. There’s a mark in our file to notify you in light of any event regarding his reentry into the public. Can I ask where you’re located this evening, if you’re in-state?” 

“No,” she’d choked, before ignoring the intention of the question. “I’ll fly out first thing in the morning.” 

-

Mulder had been wary of letting her return to her apartment unaccompanied. But one look at the way Scully itched under Samantha’s eagerness for their intimacy, even right there in the parking lot, and he knew he’d be sending her home alone. It was what she wanted. 

(“Please, Mulder,” she had begged him, quietly, as he hovered near her car door, haunted her space. 

“Scully, are you sure? I don’t…” 

“I will see you in the morning, Mulder. Very early in the morning.”)

So he had booked their flights. 

-

And then Donnie Pfaster had killed a girl with red hair. (Her blood in the bath. Her blood in the bath.) 

And Scully had felt all the blood in her body ripple. Felt the lethargy in her limbs signalling panic (signalling flight). She was afraid. Her body wanted a harbor. 

_Believe in the Lord, Agent Scully. He believes in you,_ the reverend said. 

But when he’d told her “You hear him calling you,” “His is the word,” it was Mulder who walked into the room.

_Don’t look any further._

-

He froze fingers in Ziploc bags in Equality, Illinois. He killed the reverend. 

_There is not much mystery in murder,_ Mulder said. She would remember it days later, in his bed, feeling ruined. There is not much mystery in murder; no God partook in what you’ve done.

-

Back in DC, Samantha lounges. She paints her nails and takes it off. She watches three hours of Animal Planet with a jar of chocolate-covered almonds from the fancy grocery store that Dana likes. She thinks about Dana and Fox in the diner parking lot, and how Fox had been so antsy that night, flicking through the channels with the volume _on_ until the wee hours. “You should go over there,” she’d suggested, when Fox began staring longingly at the door, jiggling his leg. 

“She doesn’t want me to.” Dana’s posture had been defensive in the parking lot—shoulders hunched, her whole self more compact. Fox had curled over her by her car door like tall grass, beckoned in her wind.

“Maybe she needs you to,” Sam had offered. 

Fox huffed a little. “She doesn’t want that, either.” 

-

Scully seeing 666 on the clock. Scully slamming herself into the bathroom door, but too late. Donnie Pfaster gets her up against the wall.

When she took her jacket off over breakfast, that morning, Mulder had looked at her in her shell and said, like a WWE announcer, “This is Biceps Scully stepping into the ring; can she take down the _toasted evvvvv-erything baaaaagel?”_

She felt strong, then. 

She claws Pfaster’s eyes and hits his face. She lunges for her gun. But he throws her into the mirror, and her gun falls to the floor, and she caws, high and wobbly, like a desperate little girl.

-

The phone rings. Samantha lets the machine pick it up, though she turns down the television to snoop in Fox’s business lest someone leave a message. 

“… I just talked to a girl who ID’d Donnie Pfaster as her attacker,” says Police Officer Whatshisname from Marion, Illinois. “Claimed Pfaster got real upset when he found out she was wearing a red wig—upset she wasn’t a redhead. Does this mean anything to you? … ‘ppreciate a call back.” 

Samantha runs. 

-

Scully’s grunting, kicking Pfaster in the balls. _Uh! Uh! Uh!_ She hits him on the back with a lamp and he stumbles into her dresser, but catches her ankle on the way down. She kicks him off, throws the bookshelf—her bowl of Melissa’s trinkets, with it—over him on the floor. 

She has broken away to the phone, dialed _9-1-1_ when he gets her to again, shoves her hard on the floor, wrenches her hands behind her back. 

His weight, there—it kills. Presses fibers of mirror glass into her skin. 

“Go back to hell!” 

He ties her up with her own stockings. She sees the face of any man, every man. And she is any woman; the helpless old ladies killed by the Boston Strangler, they had been tied this way, all. No one is safe. 

“Who does your nails, girly girl?”

She rages. “Let me go! The only reason why you’re alive is because I asked the judge for life! The only reason you’re alive is because he didn’t kill you when he could!” 

“You’re the one that got away,” he breathes. “You’re all I think about.” 

“I’m a federal agent,” she says. She is any woman. “You do anything to me and they will not give you a break this time.” 

Blood in the bath, she thinks. And a sob bubbles in her throat as she feels a sudden rush of gratefulness for Samantha; should Mulder find her, God, should Mulder find her, after. His sister will be there. Samantha will be there. 

“I’m going to run you a bath,” Pfaster says. And she screams. 

-

Mulder, coming home to his empty apartment. Deciding Samantha is… out, somewhere corny Samantha would be, like at a black and white movie or a coffee shop in Columbia Heights. 

In actuality, Samantha speeds. Thirty minutes to Georgetown, twenty minutes, ten. 

-

Pfaster drags Scully by her feet into her closet. Tells her, “Be good. And don’t cause me any problems.” 

She heaves around her gag. He runs the bath. 

He plays her a song— _Don’t look any further_ —and there, in the closet, she swears she won’t. She will love the Mulder right in front of her so hard, and never let go again.

The thought of him in front of her, with her, this whole time. _Don’t look any further._ She crawls out of the closet, rolls under her bed. 

She arches her back, gasps, threads her feet through her bound wrists and snaps free. 

She hears the front door open. 

-

A moment of eye contact: the strange man, in Dana’s living room. The blood on his face, on his shirt. Samantha screams, “ _Dana!_ ,” and Donnie Pfaster punches her in the face. 

A moment later, at the sight of Samantha on the same wood floor where Melissa had died, Scully shoots him cold. 


	8. Chapter 8

Having noticed his phone off the hook. Having played the message on his answering machine. Mulder is in Scully’s hallway in time to hear the gunshot, and God, it’s like he got hit. His chest caves; the grief of being too late catches him mid-sprint, and like a toddler he throws his arms and kicks the wall. He’s crying, and only then does he realize that the gun didn’t stop firing. 

Her front door is open. In the entranceway: Samantha on the ground, blood all over her face. Behind the couch: Donnie Pfaster’s body, and Scully trembling over it, both hands on the gun, watching for any sudden movements. 

“Call 911”—Scully does not look at him—“and check her pulse, get her shirt and stop the— _is she still bleeding?_ ” She chances him a glance for one second, _barely_ , and only in desperate horror that he is standing there in shock. “Mulder, _I said call 911!_ ” Only then goes her voice raise—gets so high it cracks—and Samantha raises an arm to moan, sluggishly touching her nose and hissing. 

“He broke my nose,” she groans, trying to sit up. “Dana? _Fuck_.” 

“I’m fine,” Scully calls to her, eyes still beating down on Pfaster. “I’m fine, Samantha!” But she is shaking from head to toe, teeth chattering as if her apartment’s cold. 

He stomps right over there and pries the gun from her fingers. She flinches as soon as he touches her, and with her gun in the back of his pants, he guides her to the sofa. Scully tenses when he puts a hand to her back. She talks to Samantha over his head the whole time: 

“Did he cut you?” 

“He only hit me…” 

“Don’t try to sit up, just stay where you are—” 

“I’m okay…” 

“Samantha,” he interrupts, “I’m coming, okay?” 

“I’m okay…” 

He clutches Scully’s hands to his chest, for one moment, after she sits. He puts his forehead on hers. “I will be right back,” he tells her, in a whisper, very seriously. _In one more moment, you don’t have to be strong._

She nods at him, unblinking, like she understands. 

-

No, he didn’t hurt her, Scully tells the paramedics. She’s trained in hand-to-hand combat; do they think she gets to practice with very many women, of only five-three, at the FBI? They fought. She’s fine. She’ll get a massage and follow up with her primary care practitioner if she is lingeringly stiff. _Please_ , she says, _my friend, he broke her nose, please go give more attention to my friend. Please just let me speak with the police._

Mulder crouches and holds his sister’s hands in the armchair while an EMT dabs her face with warm water. “Does her nose look different?” he asks Mulder, “Besides swollen?” 

“I don’t know,” he mumbles.

“Don’t worry,” says Samantha to the EMT, “it looked just as bad before I got punched.” 

“Are you having difficulty breathing?” 

“No.” 

“Did you lose consciousness?” 

“From hitting my head, maybe. For a minute.” She squeezes Mulder’s hand. “He wasn’t that strong. Is my insurance going to cover a rhinoplasty now?” 

Samantha is diagnosed with a concussion and potential nasal fracture, for which she will see Georgetown University Hospital’s otolaryngologist in three days when the swelling goes down.

Scully is diagnosed with reasonable use of deadly force by the FBI, so says the OPR representative who arrived to the scene with Skinner and Violent Crimes, hot on the heels of the Metropolitan PD. Her hearing is in fifteen days, during which time she will recuperate without her weapon and see a bureau therapist at minimum twice, to undergo and pass a psychological evaluation. She refuses the hospital. She pulls him into her hallway to speak privately, head ducked. 

“Just a little longer,” he assures her as soon as they are alone. “And then we can get out of here.” 

“I can’t go to a hotel,” she interrupts him. This is the thing she had pulled him aside to say. “Samantha needs someone to supervise—” 

He drops his shoulders and hugs her right there. 

“You’re not going to a hotel, Scully.” He flexes his muscles to squeeze her and she sighs. “Nobody’s taking you to a hotel.” 

-

Mulder packs Scully’s bag and rights her shelving unit. She lies on the bed, slippered feet dangling off it from the knee, and tells him what she wants. The soft white Calvin Klein t-shirt. Baggy blue jeans. Sweatpants he remembers from the early nineties. Thick socks, no thongs. A huge, oatmeal colored Aran sweater that he realizes only later must have belonged to her father.

My navy suit, she asks him, and he tells her they can come back for the suit. 

He sits next to her on the bed. He does not want to stand over her. He touches her knee. “You can’t judge yourself.” 

“Maybe I don’t have to.” She lolls her head to look at him, and even now, it’s erotic. He feels ashamed, immediately, for thinking it. 

“The Bible allows for vengeance,” he says, and traces circles with his thumb on her kneecap. 

“But the law doesn’t.” 

“Scully,” he tells her, “you heard them in there, you saw Samantha bloody and unconscious on the floor. What else were you supposed to do? If that’s not necessary force, I don’t know what is.” 

She shrugs, resigned. She is far, far away. They will talk later, he knows. He wants to lie down beside her and reel her in. But as they are, in this room, he can only bring her back a little. 

He quirks his head to her: sit up with me. She does. He fixes the blanket she’s been wrapped in over her legs. “The way I see it,” he whispers, “he didn’t give you a choice.” 

Scully clenches her teeth to stop from pouting, the way she does when you’re saying something she’s been needing to hear. 

“Donnie Pfaster would have surely killed again if given the chance.” 

“He was evil, Mulder. I’m sure about that without a doubt. But there’s one thing that I’m not sure of.” 

“What’s that?” 

“Who was at work in me,” she admits guiltily. “Or _what_. What made me…” She shakes her head. “What made me pull the trigger.” 

“You mean if it was God?” 

“I mean…” she sighs. “What if it wasn’t.” 

He hovers close to her then, slides an arm behind her and touches his nose, once, to her temple. She’s _here_. 

“Here’s what I know, Scully.” His low, soft voice is a balm to her rage and loathing. “Even if it wasn’t God… it was you.” 

She draws back to look at him, skeptical. He tucks her hair behind her ear, ignoring her, and she’ll believe every word he says if only he continues to look at her so tenderly. “The only voice of reason in this world.” 

He kisses her hairline, and she shivers. 

-

Scully, still in the striped pajamas. Scully on his couch, holding a forest green towel filled with ice to Samantha’s nose. Sam asking him if he still has his gun, _right?_ , and him telling her _No one’s getting in here, Samantha_ , and meaning it. 

When he is out of earshot, it seems, Samantha grabs Scully’s hand with watery eyes. “Thank you,” she whispers. 

Scully shakes her head, adamant. Upset, even, at the implication. “Samantha, I—I didn’t do anything.” 

Samantha smiles. “You called me your friend.”

“Hm?” Scully adjusts the pillows behind her, roots around for the Aztec blanket. “Are you comfortable?” 

“Dana,” Samantha stills her. With the broken nose: _Day-da_. “When the police came. When they were asking you questions.” 

Scully nods. 

“You told them that that man hurt me, and you said I was your friend.” (Not Mulder’s sister, my partner’s sister. _My friend_.)

Scully blinks. For every Mulder with faith in her, she loses one part tension from her very soul. “Of course I did.” She fixes the blanket over them both. “You are.” 

Samantha would lean on Scully’s shoulder, but she has to keep her head propped up. So, as they surf the movie channels, Scully lays her head on Samantha’s. “Has he hurt you before?” Samantha asks. “That man?” 

Scully nods. 

“Was it a long time ago?” 

“Yes,” Scully says. “He almost killed me. Mulder found me just in time.” 

“This time you found you.” 

The ghost of a smile. “And you did.” 

Samantha starts to cry. “I shouldn’t have run in there alone. What if I didn’t wake up, and he hurt you?” 

Scully swallows, resolute. “I wouldn’t have let him.” 

Samantha’s chin quivers, and she squeezes Scully’s arm. “Sometimes it’s not about what we let them, Dana.” 

And then Scully knows: for as profoundly untouched as Samantha seems, no one is. And her face crumples in grief at the fact. 

How dare she forget. 

Every woman. _No one is safe._

She hugs her friend tightly.

“You can sleep with my brother tonight,” Samantha tells her. 

Scully tenses. 

“I just mean—if you’re scared. He’s gonna tell us to take the bed, but I think you should be in there with him.”

-

The night comes. Samantha is propped on the sofa among two large pillows from the bed, dozing, with a cool washcloth across her black eyes and a splint on her nose. Mulder will wake her in— 47 minutes. 

Scully finds him in the kitchen. She’d gone to shower maybe ten minutes ago, but in front of him, she’s still dry and pajamaed, though her shirt is unbuttoned, and she’s stiff, holding it closed. 

“I need your help,” she asks him.

She favors her right side as he follows her. No longer in the throes of her primal instincts, adrenaline having left her body, she is stiff, sore.

“I need to shower,” she tells him, in the yellow bathroom light.

He nods, gently, wondering what the catch is. 

“I can’t… I need to—” She turns around and drops her shirt, baring her back to him. “Can you please help me clean this?” 

“Oh, _Scully_ …” he reaches to touch her and she winces. 

“Please be careful,” she whispers, and he could cry that he hadn’t tried to look at her before, that she had been hiding it all day. She is bloody and sallow, pressure points scraped. The most protrusive knots of her spine are red-nosed. There’s glass in a large cut on her left scapula, and even more in splinters across her lower back. 

“Come here,” he breathes, and she comes to him, looking ashamed, arms crossed over her chest. She turns around. 

He kisses her at the nape of her neck. “Who could do this to you,” he whispers, and she starts to cry. 

“Do you have tweezers and peroxide?” 

“Yeah,” he tells her, and opens the medicine cabinet. “It’s right here.” He smooths his lips along her shoulder as he leaves, squeezes her arm. “Let me just go get my glasses.” 

-

Mulder sits down on the toilet seat, where the lighting is best. Scully sits sideways in his lap, curled over his forearm, which she holds across her front like a seatbelt. He tweezes; she flinches. 

“Almost got it,” he whispers, and when the final piece of glass comes out, he wipes her blood away with his thumb. 

“You cold?” he asks her. 

She nods and snuggles closer, against him. “You’re warm,” she whispers. The fabric of his sweater soothes her goosebumps. 

He speaks to the back of her head. “I think you should stay,” he says. “For a while.” 

She nods. 

She grips his arm tighter and pulls her knees up, so there is no part of her he’s not holding. She grabs onto his fingers with both hands, pressing his hand flat. His palm covers her nipple, hard and puckered. 

“Scully,” he breathes, and she closes her eyes, drops her head to his hand where it rests over her heart. 

“You’re warm,” she insists, and though there is nothing left to do, they sit for a long time. 


End file.
